


Leia Organa is Not a Myth

by LullabyKnell



Series: Living Legends: Character Studies [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Galatic Reputations, Gen, Introspection, Minor Leia Organa/Han Solo, No Plot/Plotless, One Shot, POV Third Person, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Propaganda, Rumors, Short One Shot, Star Wars: The Force Awakens Spoilers, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, stories
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 16:11:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6617341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LullabyKnell/pseuds/LullabyKnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>The Empire told stories about Leia Organa.</em>
</p><p> <em>Those stories didn’t work very well.</em></p><p>Leia Organa goes from spoiled princess to seductive propaganda to a bitter old sorcerer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Leia Organa is Not a Myth

**Author's Note:**

> Not really a fic, more of a brief ficlet and almost character study. Except it's not so much studying Leia as wondering how the galaxy might see her and what the Empire's propaganda might say. I have never read any of the EU/Legends. I've only ever seen the movies, so if that lack of Star Wars knowledge bothers you, this might not be for you, friend.

The Empire told stories about Leia Organa.

They started off simple: calling her a simple-minded fool. Leia Organa was a silly little princess throwing a tantrum over her planet being punished for its treachery. Pretty but petty, and ever so vain, Leia Organa was just a spoiled little twit, spitting rage for not being given the power she wanted and having a fit over being caught at a crime.

Those stories didn’t work very well.

The repeated success of such a _tiny and ragtag group of rebels_ proved that there were clever and cunning folk behind the Rebellion. For a silly twit, Leia Organa slipped out of too many traps, stole too much information and too many supplies, shot down too many Imperial forces, and succeeded in her command again and again.

It didn’t reflect well against the Empire that a spoiled princess kept foiling them over and over again, even if sometimes by the thinnest of hairs.

And everyone who’d ever met Leia Organa could never believe them, and Leia Organa had met many people. All as she negotiated and coerced more and more allies for the Rebellion, and many people before that when she had pretended to exist under the Empire’s rule. _I met Leia Organa once,_ traders and governors and senators and many others across the galaxy would say, _and she’s nothing like they say she is._

Leia Organa is pretty and a princess, but her eyes are sharp and her words are sharper still, and she is made of kindness and cleverness and grief and rage. She has little patience for anyone who believes the Empire’s stories about her. Anyone who can look into her eyes and think her shallow must be blind, utterly blind, to miss the death and hopes and dreams of an entire planet.

There is nothing simple about any of the last children of Alderaan and everyone knows it - as deep down as the scream that echoed through the galaxy.

The Empire switches tactics - took them long enough - and calls the simple-minded fool and silly little princess a masterful illusion. _She’s a lie,_ they say, _and a liar._ Leia Organa is a beautiful temptress, a demoness feeding on the chaos of war, a front for the Rebel cause. She's hungry for power and revenge and the deaths of all she can lure to her weak, pointless, useless cause. This princess who should have died is only a campaign strategy, a starving creature trying to feed and protect the Rebellion scum using her to survive, them hiding behind her while she hides under a pretty woman’s face.

Some stories say that Leia Organa is dead. She died with Alderaan; her silly support of the rebels killed her. What exists now is a sick, twisted figurehead invention of the Rebellion to gain support - _a lying lie._ A ghost, a demon, an undead enchantress and seductress who weaves pretty and terrible falsehoods and deceptions.

Leia Organa hears these rumors and instead of scoffing like she did at those that proclaimed her a brainless twit, she laughs. Then she scoffs. And then she goes back to work. The Empire can say what it wants; that won’t make it true that the Rebellion _isn’t_ gaining ground. (It hurts when people believe the stories, but Leia’s scale for pain is fairly skewed now, against the hole where her heart used to be.)

A similar reaction goes through most of the Rebellion, those who don’t scoff with disgust, they burst into laughter and laugh until they cry. _Oh yeah,_ Red Squadron agrees, wiping actual tears off their cheeks, _that’s the princess, alright, seducing men left and right. Yep, there she is now, standing on a box and yelling in General Solo’s face again as he yells back. Hair frizzy from working all night and wearing Skywalker’s ugly yellow jacket again, that’s the true picture of temptation and enchantment.  
_

Luke laughs so hard that he falls to the floor and can’t get up for fifteen minutes. (Anyone who so must as suggests it might be true in front of him quickly learns the _true meaning of fear,_ but otherwise) Luke nearly dies because he keeping cracking up and almost hits his head on stuff, and Wedge has had to repeatedly drag him off to Medical to check if there’s something wrong with him.

(The tests keep coming up negative but Wedge doesn’t understand how anyone can find _their own_ intragalatic Imperial reputation as a dangerous religious lunatic absolutely hilarious. There’s something in the sand on Tatooine, you mark Wedge’s words.)

Han Solo can’t believe what he’s hearing when he hears the rumors, and doesn’t even laugh. He teases Princess Leia about it, of course, but everybody quickly learns not to joke about it in his presence because suddenly the smuggler’s all _you wanna repeat that, buddy?_ And nobody wants to have their arms torn off by a Wookie.

The Empire can tell all the stories it wants, it still loses in the end.

About twenty years later, the First Order tells stories about Leia Organa, and it’s the same old story all over again. (A son of Skywalker has fallen, the Jedi have fallen with stragglers scattered across the stars, someone is building _another_ giant super-weapon, and the Organas are fighting back against an Empire.) They feed her ever-growing reputation with the same old motto: demonize and dehumanize.

The only difference is that they acknowledge the existence of the Force again, saying she uses it to twist minds and hearts and souls.

And they don’t call her beautiful anymore.

Leia Organa pretends to be a kindly old woman, but she’s really a cunning old crone. She’s a bitter old hag who can’t let go of rebellion, who wants to tear the galaxy apart because she wants everything but her wrinkled hands can’t handle it all. A small and sickly, but deadly and devious and dangerous and ugly _witch._ A sorcerer and warmonger and forever insurgent, all twisted up in a bitter, ancient thing. 

And that’s not even getting started on what they say about Luke.

Leia Organa just laughs, then scoffs. (There’s a pain in her chest, but it’s not important.) And then she gets back to work.

She remembers when she used to be beautiful, you know.

(“Used to be,” Han says with loyal disdain, then insists, “ _Still._ ”)

These little men can talk all they want to prove what big boys they are, but she’s gone from a pretty-petty princess to a villainous temptress and fabrication to an old and terrible witch, and she’s still kicking.

Those stories didn’t work very well. 

(At least, she thinks they didn’t. She hopes so. It hurts when people believe the stories, but Leia’s scale for pain is fairly skewed now, against the hole where her heart used to be. Oh, to think that she could find them both, in the dark and distant places they’ve gone to, and bring them home.)

They’ll prove them wrong again.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this fic of mine, you might also like:
> 
> [ **The Story of Finn**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5594782/chapters/12891928) (SW) - _The story they hear is that of FN-2187. The only thing Stormtroopers own are stories._
> 
> [ **You will Bleed to Death with the Pain of It**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3916129) (HP) - _A soulmarks universe one-shot that traverses the entire series. Harry Potter is born with the words "Avada Kedavra" written over his heart. The world is different, but the story is the same._
> 
> [ **Small Gods**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4976248) (MCU) - _“Larger than life. They say that a lot, in the interviews and social media posts, when they talk about meeting Tony Stark. (Who’s ‘they’? Well, everybody, of course.)”_


End file.
